The REAL Movie Event of the Summer

The smell punched me as soon as I walked into the theatre.  I had already been hesitant about this experience, and now I was grossed out too. Perfect.

I loved Dragon Ball Z as a kid, but the movie sounded less than compelling, especially as an adult.  I gave in when Bishop's friends begged us, more out of nostalgia than anything else.

Tickets sold out several hours in advance; luckily we'd purchased ours that afternoon, or we really would have been screwed.  Eau du Basement Dweller washed over me as we tried to find our seats in a surprisingly crowded theatre, our friends waving frantically for us.  They -- and all the other guys around us -- radiated excitement, like this was the best movie to hit theatres since Desolation of Smaug last Christmas.

Still skeptical, I sat and began people watching.  The first thing I noticed? This theatre contained, no joke, 98% men.  I think I saw maybe 5-7 girls in the whole place, including me.  The second thing was that we were surrounded by some truly out-of-date people: the group sitting behind me was having a Trigun argument (the anime was released in 1998) and when one of those Snickers commercials aired, I heard several "I am Jack's aggressive appetite" jokes, a 1999 Fight Club vintage I was surprised to find still irritating.  The third thing I noticed, before the lights dimmed, was the stranger sitting next to me; he was waiting for the movie to start by playing on his phone, complete with Goku (the DBZ main character) background.  We are talking high-level Nerd Achievements here.

Here's the poster. You now know more about this movie than I did when I agreed to see it. 

When the lights dimmed, everyone instantly hushed.  There were no trailers -- maybe when a theatre is showing a relic from the 90s, they can't use their standard previews? I'm not sure.  It got as far as that 'digital picture brought to you by whoever' ad (that one that always looks way prettier than the actual movie) before even the projector couldn't handle it and revolted; the movie stopped, the sound died, the lights came up, and the theatre went nuts.

About 3 minutes later, a blue PlayStation3-esque loading screen appeared, to shouts of "They're using the torrent file!" and plenty of laughter.  We were back on track.

The opening few minutes of any truly nerdy movie are filled with inside jokes that only those who faithfully followed the origin material gets; this remained true of the Dragon Ball Z movie. As soon as Goku and King Kai show up in the opening scene, complete with video game-style sound effects, the theatre went nuts.  Again. Since it'd been an appropriate number of years since I'd seen this show, I had no idea what was going on.  As the dialogue went on, it became clear that there some things I just wasn't going to get; Goku would say something and everyone would laugh, including Bishop, and I just had no idea what was going on.  That's actually unusual for me -- I have a great memory for quoting movies and TV shows, and I really did love this show.  Apparently too much has happened since my last viewing and I'd lost all the really important information.

There is an actual plot to this movie.  Lord Beerus, a god who looks strikingly like a large, angry, purple cat, has heard of something called a Super Saiyan God, and he's seeking out the remaining Saiyans in order to meet one.  In doing so, he crashes Vegeta's wife Bulma's birthday party, where he ends up enjoying time with his minion/trainer, Whis, Vegeta and family, Gohan, and the rest of the Dragon Ball Z gang.  Goku crashes later, having had a disagreement with Beerus before.  Eventually, Beerus gets pissed and demands a fight with the Super Saiyan God, so they have to figure out a way to find one so he can meet him and thus leave the party/Earth alone.

This can be summed up more accurately here:

At the party, Beerus wants to try pudding but Buu won't share. 

His totally sane reaction to Buu's selfishness. 

With some help, Goku goes from this 

to *fabulous* (check out that pink hair and those delts)

 so he can stop Beerus from destroying the Earth. Over a pudding cup. 

I swear that's the plot.  A few minutes of obligatory bad Japanese pop music during the fight scene, and the movie is over.  Bulma even invites Beerus back to her birthday part next year and Whis gets a sushi to-go box to take back to his and Beerus's training planet/tree thing.  (Spoiler Alert: Beerus is ultimately defeated by wasabi -- he eats a whole chunk of it in one bite and his head just explodes.)

It surprised me, but I actually had a lot of fun. The movie was really funny -- Trunks finds Mai, who now looks like a little kid (a throwback to the show? not sure) and wants her to be his girlfriend, and Emperor Pilaf keeps trying to steal things and getting caught, but no one's concerned because he also looks like a little kid.  Goten and Trunks run around together, and Piccolo looks on with his usual cool detachment while Vegeta gets super pissed at nothing and keeps blowing up at Beerus or Bulma.

The dialogue and animation are pretty much still kid-level, just like the anime, so going in with no expectations helps :) And anytime anything even remotely subtle happens, everyone immediately shouts about it for the next five minutes -- an old anime tradition.  Watching with someone you can make fun of it with helps too.

Somehow, I doubt I'll be purchasing this gem, but for a night, it was fun to re-live being a kid with Dragon Ball Z.